Concept Art Offers Peek at Tim Burton’s Twisted Mind
Recently released images from Tim Burton’s upcoming Alice in Wonderland adaptation reminded moviegoers that the quirky London-based director possesses one of the most extravagant visual vocabularies of any filmmaker now working.
Tag Archive for 'Tim Burton'
Tim Burton – The Good, The Bad And The Batman.
The prospect of slow-walking through the major exhibition celebrating the film career of director Tim Burton when it hits Melbourne next June should have every self-respecting cineaste foaming at the gills with anticipation. For there is plenty to celebrate.
You might have gone down the rabbit hole before. But never with a guide quite as attuned to the fantastic as Tim Burton.
Those who have grown curiouser and curiouser about what the offbeat reinventor of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might conjure up in his version of Alice in Wonderland can feast their eyes on this array of concept art and publicity images, due to hang in movie theaters this week to promote the March 5, 2010, release.
“It has been Burton-ized” is how producer Richard Zanuck describes the director’s vision of the Lewis Carroll classic. Many elements are familiar, from the enigmatic Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) to the fierce Jabberwock (Christopher Lee). But none has been presented in this sort of visually surreal fashion.
“We finished shooting in December after only 40 days,” Zanuck says. Now the live action is being merged with CG animation and motion-capture creatures, and then transferred into 3-D.
The traditional tale has been freshened with a blast of girl power, courtesy of writer Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast). Alice, 17, attends a party at a Victorian estate only to find she is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of snooty society types. Off she runs, following a white rabbit into a hole and ending up in Wonderland, a place she visited 10 years before yet doesn’t remember.
Among those who welcome her back is the Mad Hatter, a part tailor-made for Johnny Depp as he collaborates with Burton for the seventh time. “This character is off his rocker,” Zanuck says.
Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska, 19, best known for HBO’s In Treatment, has the coveted title role. “There is something real, honest and sincere about her,” Zanuck says. “She’s not a typical Hollywood starlet.”
There is the usual Burton-esque ghoulishness (Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen, whose favorite retort is “Off with their heads,” has a moat filled with bobbing noggins), but Zanuck assures most kids can handle it. “The book itself is pretty dark,” he notes. “This is for little people and people who read it when they were little 50 years ago.”
With curly red hair sticking out from his quirky hat, a ghostly pallor and bohemian Victorian clothes, Johnny Depp is unrecognisable in his latest role.
The chameleon Hollywood actor is, once again, transforming his good looks for his upcoming role as the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland.
The 45-year-old star is playing a darker version of the tea-drinking hat maker in Tim Burton’s upcoming remake of the Lewis Carroll classic.
And this picture is being touted as the first glimpse of the actor in the role.
Through his three decades-long career, Depp has frequently disguised his good looks for a variety of characters, including Edward Scissorhands and Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies.
Mia Wasikowska, 18, from Canberra, Australia, will be playing Alice, alongside Anne Hathaway as the White Queen.
Burton has also cast his real-life partner Helena Bonham Carter as the moody Red Queen. (Bet that one surprised you huh?)
The director frequently works with Bonham Carter in his movies, having cast her in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (which also starred Depp), Big Fish and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (again with Depp).
Matt Lucas, of Little Britain fame, has been cast as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The Queen star Michael Sheen (Tony Blair) will play the Cheshire Cat, while Back To The Future star Crispin Glover (George McFly) will play the Knave of Hearts.
